How to change the Wallpaper on a rooted Amazon Fire TV

A feature present on most Android based devices that’s missing from the Amazon Fire TV is the ability to customize the background wallpaper. Sure, you can enable wallpapers on alternate launchers, but what if you prefer the default home screen but want to spice it up a bit and make it your won? The beautify of rooted Fire TVs is having the freedom to make changes to the device that are otherwise not possible. This guide will show you how to set any image as your rooted Fire TV’s wallpaper.

This guide uses an Xposed module called Resflux that allows you to change the resources used by any app. Let me know in the comments if a full custom theme for the Fire TV is something you’d be interested in. It would be considerably more work on my part, but if there’s enough demand, I can try to put a guide together.

Contents

Part 1: Install and initialize Xposed and Resflux

You only have to follow the steps in part 1 once. With Xposed and Resflux installed and initialized, you can skip the steps in part 1 the next time you decide to change your Fire TV’s wallpaper.

If you don’t already have it installed, install the Xposed Framework using this guide.

Download version 1.5 of the Resflux Xposed Module from here. You’ll need to click the “Show older versions” link at the bottom of the page. At the time that this guide is being written, version 1.6 does not work with the Fire TV.

Sideload the Resflux APK file you just downloaded the same way you would sideload an app.

Perform the next 3 initialization steps for each of the following 5 apps:
Amazon FreeTime, Amazon Music, Appstore ,KFTV Launcher, and Photos.

Scroll down and select the app.

Wait for Resflux to finish “Mapping resources…”. Once you see text (see screenshot below) on the screen, you can move on to the next step.

Press the BACK button on the remote to return to Resflux’s list of apps, and repeat with the next of the 5 apps listed above.

Part 2: Change the Fire TV’s Wallpaper

The wallpaper image should be 1920 x 1080 pixels and in PNG format. Since the Fire TV’s interface text color is light, dark wallpaper images work best. Visit AFTVnews.com/wallpaper for a collection of wallpapers that work well with the Fire TV. If you find or create a good Fire TV wallpaper, email it to wallpaper@aftvnews.com and I’ll add it to the collection.

Combine your wallpaper.png file and the Resflux.ini file you just downloaded into a ZIP file. It doesn’t matter what you name the ZIP file. To do this on Windows: Highlight the two files, right-click, and select “Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder“. To do this on Mac: Highlight the two files, right-click, and select “Compress 2 Items“.

Send the ZIP file to your Fire TV’s /sdcard/Resflux/ directory by connecting to it via ADB and running the following command:adb push Archive.zip /sdcard/Resflux/(Be sure to change Archive.zip to the full path of your ZIP file.)

[OPTIONAL] Once you’ve imported the ZIP file, it does not need to remain on your Fire TV for the wallpaper to work. If you’d like, you can delete the ZIP file from your Fire TV by running the command:adb shell rm -f /sdcard/Resflux/Archive.zip
Be sure to replace Archive.zip with the name of your ZIP file. Alternately, you can delete all files in the /sdcard/Resflux/ directory at once by running the command:adb shell rm -f /sdcard/Resflux/*

Press the home button on your remote and restart your Fire TV by holding down the SELECT and PLAY buttons on your remote simultaneously for several seconds.

When your Fire TV reboots, your new wallpaper should be present. If it isn’t, double check that you the Resflux module is enabled within Xposed and go through the initialization steps again for all 5 apps listed above.

To revert back to the default wallpaper, simply clear Resflux’s app data. Note that you will need to repeat this guide from part 1 step 8 and on if you want to change the wallpaper again after clearing Resflux’s app data.

Part 3: Troubleshooting

If you’ve gone through this guide and your wallpaper did not change, here are some things to try and check:

Launch Xposed, go to Modules section, and verify that there is a check mark next to Resflux. While you’re there, verify that it says “1.5” next to the check mark. Version 1.6 of Resflux does not work on the Fire TV at this time.

Launch Resflux, go to the Laboratory section, open “KFTV Launcher”, click “drawable” with a mouse in the top left, scroll down to “home_bg”. The text should be green. If it isn’t, repeat step 10 from part 1 of this guide for each of the 5 apps listed. Then import your wallpaper ZIP file again (step 8 & 9 from part 2).

Be sure the ZIP file you created does not contain any folders. You need to ZIP the two files (wallpaper.png and Resflux.ini), NOT the folder containing the two files. Here is a sample ZIP file that you can use to test: sample-wallpaper.zip

Well, I restarted after I enabled the Resflux module in XPosed. Then I did the mapping process for all 5 apps and imported the zip (I did not restart between the mapping and the import of zip). Of course, I rebooted the FTV as a final step for the wallpaper to show up.

I just checked again, and it is in green fonts now….

I think I am realizing my mistake… I think I checked it before the ini file was read by Resflux (that is before I pushed the zip to FTV). No wonder, it was not in green as the app did not know which properties the ini was going to change. Oops.. my bad..

I get Line 1 :Error 0. When I try to import it. I went through the troubleshoot–The line is green. My Archive.zip looks just like your sample. Any tips?
Oh and I am running 1.5
BTW–This is very cool. Thanks for all your work!

That likely means you messed up Part 1 Step 5, when you sent the file to your Fire TV. That, or you didn’t create the ZIP correctly. Try using a file explorer app to seeif the ZIP file is int he /sdcard/Resflux/ directory. Also try using my sample ZIP file from the troubleshooting steps.

My box will not go to sleep anymore, screen saver kicks in but will not go to sleep however will go to sleep if I go in settings/system and chose sleep option. I reversed back to original (cleaned data in Resflux, removed module in xposed and then un-installed Resflux and still not go. Tried the same thing on the 2nd unit and now this 2nd unit will not go to sleep as well. BTW both units had no issue at all before wallpaper was changed and all hardware attached to the USB port is exactly the same.
Any idea what may be causing this? Thank you

i have a problem i followed the steps to a T but when i try to troubleshoot it and look up home_bg it wont go past the letter g on the ktv launcher and it takes me back to the select target screen any ideas on how can i get past that

First i noticed Resflux 1.6 is working with the fire stick, i replaced the launcher icon of the xposed installer to test this. the second thing is i dont get this to work. i tried with version 1.4 / 1.5 and 1.6 of resflux but neither one seem to work. I also double checked the resource mapping has happended and the correct entries are green. I replaced the resource by hand, used my own zip file and also tried your sample zip. But as you guess i had no success on this. I rebooted serveral times and i also changed the wallpaper of some other apps like the gamecircle dashboard, the settings page and some other but i still can’t get this to work. I have a german fire stick with firmware version 54.1.1.3. Maybe anyone here can help me with this.